The Mulberry House

The Story

Synopsis

Sara grew up in Yemen to a Yemeni father and a Scottish mother, and at age 17, finally decided to move to Scotland.
Ten years later – 2011 – Sara returns to Yemen as a different person, geared up to face the home of her past and reconnect with her long-severed roots. But against all personal expectations, she returns to find her family and country teetering on the brink of a revolution.

Filmmaker

SARA ISHAQ is an award-winning Yemeni-Scottish documentary filmmaker.
Her debut short documentary film “Karama Has No Walls” was nominated for an Academy Award in 2014, BAFTA New Talent Award 2013, and screened internationally, winning several awards including Aljazeera Film Festival Award for Short Doc.

SARA holds an MFA in film directing at the Edinburgh College of Art. In the past few years Sara volunteered in the occupied Palestinian territories and did radio-reporting from Yemen while documenting her experiences through video blogs, and has been involved in several BBC productions set in the Middle East. Her most recent doc “The Mulberry House” shot in Yemen during the revolution was an official selection of IDFA 2013 and participated at Muher Competition in Dubai International Film Festival 2013. Sara is the co-founder of the Yemeni media collective #SupportYemen and ‘Comra’, Yemen’s first documentary film camp.

The Mulberry House in Numbers

11Competitions & Nominations

52festival screenings

32debate sessions with the audience

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Press Highlights

"It is such a good beginning of the film. A family gathered around food, eating, discussing, among other matters the usual one, you think, about man/woman, boy/girl in a society with pretty conservative traditions, seen from our part of the world. They have fun, laugh, close-up on faces, children, youngsters, father, grandfather. They are all in a big house with a garden to which the daughter Sara has come back after having grown up in Scotland with her mother. She has a camera in hand [...] Actually you, with this opening, tend to think that you are about to watch a Yemenite version of a Marcel Pagnol film.

But you are not. You are told that a family member is in prison for treason, and you are slowly, parallel to the development and characterisation of the main characters, aware that something is going to happen outside the house in the streets of Saan’a, where demonstrations against the dictatorship take place, it is maybe a revolution."

Tue Steen Müller @ Filmkommentaren.dk

" ... Though she includes power cuts, street shooting and the sound of fighter jets overhead, Ishaq isn’t simply making a film about Yemen’s unrest but rather one family’s response to a nation in rebellion. It’s far more about negotiating her place between two worlds and her engagement with her family than a document of the protest movement, and as such reinforces the feminist refrain “The personal is political.” Yet “The Mulberry House” does so with a gentle touch, conveying a sense of familial warmth without piling on the emotion... "

Jay Weissberg @ Variety

"There have been several documentaries about the Arab spring from various country perspectives [...] but they have tended to focus on a 'firebrand' point of view. Ishaq's film is more firmly rooted in the every day. Even during a powercut with gunfire ringing out, she captures the fact that one of the young girls in the household is chiefly concerned about whether the electric will be restored before her favourite TV soap comes on in the morning."

Event Information:

DocsBarcelona + Medellín

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Sara grew up in Yemen to a Yemeni father and a Scottish mother, and at age 17, finally decided to move to Scotland. Ten years later – 2011 – Sara returns to Yemen as a different person, geared up to face the home of her past and reconnect with her long-severed roots. But against all personal expectations, she returns to find her family and country teetering on the brink of a revolution.

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Questions & Answers with Sara Ishaq

The revolution in Yemen plays a major role in your two documentaries "Karama Has No Walls" and "The Mulberry House". Looking back from today's perspective, how would you assess the outcome of the revolution?

The revolution was ultimately unsuccessful. We failed to thoroughly uproot the regime, because no one was prosecuted for corruption. But perhaps the revolution was successful in one respect: it brought a few Yemeni activists to prominence who were previously unknown. In general, however, the revolutionary youth were marginalised. Some of those who are striving for power and influence have even been abused for political ends.
We young people want to build a modern, democratic state based on the rule of law. But this is being prevented by various players in Yemen who are trying to seize power and gain control over the nation's resources. Yemen is like a garden that was full of weeds – with a few flowers scattered in between. The Arab Spring came, but only trimmed these weeds on the surface without pulling them up by the roots, and then planted beautiful flowers among them. These bloomed for a short while, but then the weeds grew back again and choked and killed the flowers of the revolution. The soil in this garden and its foundations are simply poisoned. Yemen needs new soil.

You left Yemen to study film directing in Britain, returning again after an absence of many years. What was it like to return home as a young filmmaker?

When I returned to Yemen in early 2011, no one expected a revolution to erupt there soon. I came back from the UK to do a final project for my degree – a documentary about my grandfather's life. It wasn't easy at first. People in the Middle East in general have a fear of cameras. They think they are out to spy on them and do them wrong. This is why my family initially viewed my plans with great scepticism. Shooting a film in Yemen is difficult, particularly if you want to include women. A veil is usually drawn over their identity, which should not be revealed in images. Men don't normally talk about their daughters or sisters and do not mention their names in front of strangers. They only talk in very general terms about the "family".

How did you deal with these challenges?

What helped me was the fact that I wasn't planning to make a film for a wide audience – which is what happened with my film "Karama Has No Walls". I just wanted to make a small final project film for my university course. I was thus able to persuade my family to take part. I told them that the world knows too little about Yemen and the Yemenis, that people don't know we're a civilised nation that is culturally and socially very heterogeneous. Instead, many perceive Yemen as a backward tribal society.
I convinced my family that we need to do something to change this stereotype, by conveying a different image of Yemen through films. They then finally agreed and also allowed me to shoot on Change Square in Sanaa when the revolution broke out. I worked with numerous activists during the shoot. The footage was unplanned and more or less intuitive, because I didn't know at the time that I would later use the interviews for my documentary "Karama Has No Walls". The film is about the massacres in Sanaa on the "Friday of Dignity". It certainly never entered my head that the film would later be nominated for an Oscar.

What can cinema and art set in motion in Yemen?

Films, in particular documentaries, can enlighten people. Many Yemenis are rather gullible and kind-hearted. That's the problem. A large number of people there are poor and uneducated, making them easy prey for others out to abuse their kindness and convince them of false notions. Nowadays, this can be done very easily and quickly using smartphones and social networks. This was the case, for example, when rumours began to circulate about Change Square, one of the central locations of Yemen's youth revolution. People believed the myth that women were being raped and men killed in the square, and that it was taken over by gangs of thugs. Furthermore, many Yemenis have religious, social and tribal prejudices. Such bias is of course present in any society, but Yemenis in particular need to be enlightened. While I was in Yemen during the revolution, I tried to enlighten people about what was actually going on there.

But can art really change anything under such circumstances and in today's situation?

Yes, most definitely. Before the revolution, there was no real art, no film industry in Yemen; there were no blogs or video blogs, no street art such as singing or music. There was also no public space for such activities, where people could meet and interact, or where their talents could be fostered. The revolution gave young people the opportunity to discover these things, and also to network. They began to meet in coffee shops to make music, to write blogs and to talk with their peers about the events of the revolution. This strengthened the spirit of cohesion amongst them. Before, there were no youth or cultural centres where young people could come together. The few coffee shops in Sanaa thus became meeting places for the revolutionary youth.

In your second film, "The Mulberry House", which you made in Yemen, you concentrate on the history of your family.

In this film, I wanted to focus on my family's life in Sanaa. The film is a kind of rediscovery of my Yemeni roots. I went abroad to study. During my time abroad, I lost my inner connection with my family and the Yemeni culture. I didn't travel to Yemen for five years. When I came back, I started to film my family and it was then that I understood how much the family dynamics had changed. For me, the change in my family was like a revolution. It also reflected the transformation of society – a transformation that ultimately led to the revolution. Most people had changed and wanted things around them to change. That is why I think a film like "The Mulberry House" helps people to understand the situation in Yemen and to see the Yemenis as ordinary human beings, who are now being bombarded and exposed to violence.

Still from The Mulberry House

Category:
Film Stills

"Throughout filming, I was able to trace shifts in perspectives and attitudes, particularly in my father, who embodied Yemen’s transformation, often expressing himself and playing the devil’s (and thus ‘my’) advocate, and my grandfather, who embodied Yemen’s unyielding traditionalism in an attempt to maintain the peace. The camera documented the gradual shift of an apolitical, conservative family into a politicised, non-conformist one; the strong personalities and controversial opinions emerging before my lens mirrored the complex and often conflicting nature of Yemeni society"http://www.barakabits.com/2013/12/finding-grounds-common-understanding

We are happy to announce that The Mulberry House received a Special Jury Mention at DocsBarcelona+Medellín International Documentary Film Festival 2015!

"The four members of the Jury were unanimous in their choice, and the mention was given to the movie for "the risky way that it describes the contradictions of Yemeni society."" www.docsbarcelonamedellin.com

Last week The Mulberry House was screened as part of the Barbican’s I/Eye in Conflict series, which aims to bring “the insider’s perspective from recent wars, revolutions, uprisings, and occupations in the Middle East, giving access to these experiences as they unfold.”

The series was created due to the organisers’ belief that “First person accounts of momentous events of our time are precious”, a statement that rings especially true for The Mulberry House, which paints an intimate portrait of the filmmaker Sara Ishaq’s family as the events of 2011 explode around them.